The Enterprise search space presents a different search challenge than the Consumer search space because an Enterprise may include multiple different databases and systems for different organizations within a company. Current enterprise and consumer search solutions attempt to hide the repositories of data being searched and presented. To the contrary, huge benefits can be realized by focusing on the repositories with intelligent processing. Additionally, many users feel as if they have no control over the results for their specific needs. That is, engineers feel that too many results are weighted towards sales, or when searching for an IT tool they find too many IT presentations instead of the actual tool, or when their daily tasks change they have no way to adjust the relevancy. The growing use of the cloud will add to the problem.
In a consumer searching system, multiple different sources or repositories are searched. Generally, the results returned to a user from a search are a blended list of single-line results, which can include new sources, discussion groups, documents, etc. Some consumer searching systems provide containers for different types of data through the use of tabs, such as a web tab, an images tab, a maps tab, etc. However, the ordering of the tabs is static and generally includes multiple different pages. The result is that is makes it difficult for the user to maintain mental continuity when scanning results. It also takes longer to isolate the set of desired results to view as users in the enterprise do think in terms of data repositories.
Searching systems that search based on role, community and/or organizational relevancy can improve relevancy of search results within an enterprise system. However, for a role based system, each job titles would need a separate algorithm, and in a large company the number of different job title may be extremely burdensome. Additionally, when a user is looking for a tool that is not within their field or role, then a search based on their role may not be within the search results or buried on the second or third page of results. Most users don't look beyond the first page of search results.
Other search engines allows a user to search a device based on searching multiple different types of data such as documents, folders, images, contacts, etc. separately. The search results are returned in a list sorted by a simple static ordering which includes a various types of data. The static ordering does not order the types of data based on relevancy for the user. However, each type of data is searched based the same criteria. The order of different types of data searched is the same for all searches and set by the search engine. The user can completely override the search engine's ordering and/or delete types of data searched, but only in regard to one specific device at a time and changing the list of types of data searched is very cumbersome.